Ultraviolence album cover
Ultraviolence

Lana Del Rey

2014
Polydor

Lana Del Rey’s second major label album was almost complete when she recruited Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys to tweak it, and they wound up spending six high-intensity weeks rebuilding the record from the ground up. The album has a psychedelic, reverb-soaked quality; every instrument sounds like it was recorded in a giant wood-paneled room, but the drums are mixed into subterranean booms, far away like the memories of drums you heard once. The guitar solos (yes, there are guitar solos) on “Shades of Cool” and “Money Power Glory” whine like a wasp the size of a minivan trapped in an equally huge glass jar, as Del Rey sings (on the former) of her boyfriend who “when he calls, he calls for me and not for you,” and on the latter, “Hallelujah, I’m gonna take you for all that you’ve got.” The song titles — “Cruel World,” “Pretty When You Cry,” “Sad Girl,” “The Other Woman” — are so on the nose they read like brilliant self-parody, and the lyrics to tracks like “Money Power Glory,” “Brooklyn Baby,” and “Fucked My Way Up to the Top” reveal that while Del Rey knows you’re watching her, she’s watching you, too.

Phil Freeman

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